The migrant children of the “global south”: citizens of nowhere

Abandoned by their families, because they left already for the US or because they don’t have enough money to support them, or abandoned by their states, who leave them in poverty and in the insecurity of criminality, the children of Latin America, like the children of the other continents of the so called “global south,” have been forgotten for long time. Sometimes they get to the news because of some NGOs reporting the level of human poverty among them, or because of some international event, like the World Cup in Brazil, exposing the prostitution and the drug-addiction to which they are relegated. But for the most part they are the forgotten citizens of our modern world. They don’t have voice, no right to vote, no income or revenue, no tax payment and no possibility to defend themselves from the violence and the power of the adults. Pedophilia, increased since some decades also through globalization, is not only a phenomenon of the Catholic Church, it is a symbol of the defenselessness and the violence in which the children, in particular of the “global south”, are living in our modern times.
This violence and insecurity of young ages is an emblem of our modern global inequality and discrimination, because when there is exploitation by the powerful to the powerless the first to be caught in the net are the most powerless among the powerless, not only and probably not so much women and elderly today, but more and more the children. Either as soldiers, prostitutes, workers or street beggars the children of the poor countries of the world are living aberrant lives. Lives of animals, not human beings. While they should be our most precious human beings, they are abandoned by our societies, which are too busy to deal with the patriarchal values of power and money to think about protection of the vulnerables.

The children of Central American poor countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, are arriving to the border of the US in thousands recently. In the past years many of them were caught at the border with Mexico, or inside the Mexican state, but with Mexico struggling more and more with drug war nowadays the children have more possibilities now to reach the US using the famous “death trains”. Recently John Kerry said that the US feel co-responsible of the poverty and insecurity that the children in Central America are living and that force them to leave towards the north. Since last October over 47,000 unaccompanied minors have crossed the border into the US, suffering from mistreatment and mental health issues before to be send back to their countries to live again the same miserable lives and waiting to escape again. This rising in numbers respect to former years is caused also by the long term rumors that the future Obama immigration policy would have allowed sooner or later the unauthorized migrants to be regularized in the US, in particular the children. But one year after the US Senate passed the bipartisan comprehensive reform bill today the House of Congress, dominated by Republican party, doesn’t seem interested in approving the bill (see on this the article on CNN, with also an interesting documentary: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/06/27/a-year-from-senate-passage-foes-advocates-of-immigration-reform-battle-on/ )

After the increasing of these numbers in the last period may be the US Congress will start to talk about this issue again or may be the US government will start to think about how to help to change the situation from where these children escape and do something regarding the drug wars, the criminality and the poverty in those countries in the American backyard. But citizenship remains the fundamental discriminatory tool of our modern times of the North versus the South, not only in the Western Hemisphere. Migrations have always existed but only after decolonization rich states started to defend their borders with more stricter rules, afraid of the invasion of the poor people. But migration are natural movements of humankind and cannot be stopped. Besides this, the modern migrations are caused by the conflicts and suffering lived by the poor countries, facilitated, if not produced, by the rich countries. So it is time to think differently, with new perspectives and more just global policies, if we want to address this problem not with fortresses but with bridges, this is also democracy. We need to review the concept of citizenship as we are building a planetary human being that at the same time is often not considered a citizen of a country. We need to look at human citizenship more then state citizenship for our future democracies. This not only in the US but also in Europe, where after the deaths of so many people, including children, in the Mediterranean Sea during last years, may be Europe will start to think on how to deal with the conflicts, the poverty and the insecurity of the populations of North Africa and Middle East. We need to help those countries to overcome poverty and insecurity but at the same time we need to build real policies for asylum seekers instead of thinking on how to defend ourselves from the ‘barbaric invasions’. We have to stop to accept the illegal immigration as useful to our economic interests because undocumented immigrant cannot be protected by the labor laws.
The only hope we have is that our leaders will start to think more wisely, with longer vision strategies for the international migrations in particular of the youth from the “global south”. Because a democracy that doesn’t consider citizens its immigrants just because they are undocumented is not a real democracy, as the power is not anymore ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’. And a society that abandon its children is not an healthy society but a society that seeds its own devastation. And a civilization that steel the childhood to its children is not a long lasting civilization but a civilization that seeds its own decline. So if we don’t want to see enormous and increasing problems and suffering in our planetary future we need to act in the right direction and act quickly. To think to our future generations means to think to our children today. To their education, empowerment and realization. There is no more urgent issue, neither climate change or terrorism, that is more imperative than build a good and dignified life for our youth in this world. Otherwise the sufferings of today will become the hell of tomorrow. There is no space for indifference: ‘I care’ not ‘mind your business’ has to be the motto of the policies in our Western countries. Like Niemoller taught us during Nazism, if we don’t care today there will be nobody, tomorrow, to take care about us. And if we don’t care about our children today, there will be no adult children tomorrow, to take care about humankind.First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out–Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out– Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out– Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me. (Marin Niemoller)